Header banner
Revain logoHome Page
Jesus Jenkins photo
1 Level
1310 Review
38 Karma

Review on πŸ’½ 256GB JetDrive Lite 350 Storage Expansion Card for 15-Inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display – Transcend (TS256GJDL350) by Jesus Jenkins

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Inexpensive upgrade to MacBook Pro and Air

One of the few downsides of Mac computers with solid-state drives is the relatively small amount of internal storage. In an age where 500GB is the norm and even 1TB is commonplace, a 256GB drive isn't much. When I bought my 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, I explained that with iCloud and other cloud storage options, losing half my hard drive would be offset by the increased speed and reliability of the SSD. To a certain extent, these assumptions were correct. However, I often find myself trying to manage disk usage by trying to keep at least 10% of total storage open. Transcend offers a solution. For just under $80 and the Jet Drive Lite 350, I increased my storage space by fifty percent. The Transcend Jet Drive Lite is essentially a high-capacity SD card that plugs into one of the existing SD ports on MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. There are four different card models and you should study the table carefully before ordering. Customized for a specific machine, each card is designed to fit into a connector and be more or less flush with the case, rather than sticking out like a regular SD card. Ordinary card can be ejected by spring. This is not the case with Jet Drive Lite. It's very difficult to remove, and since it's effectively an extra SSD, persistence is a virtue. I accidentally "pulled" the card out of the Finder, only to find that it just shuts down. The easiest way to recover is to log out and then log back in and the drive will be recognized automatically. The card comes in a box with warranty information and nothing else. A limited lifetime warranty, if you can read it without an electron microscope, isn't bad. However, you must ensure that your card details are backed up regularly. I'm using a Time Capsule and the setup at install ruled out Jet Drive Lite. I think the reason for this is that the drive appears to your Mac as nothing more than a temporary SD card and SD cards are not backed up unless you change your settings. So I pasted it with the map and port open. The card doesn't pop out, there's no "click" associated with my effort. However, an icon immediately appeared on my desktop and I knew my MBP was reading the drive. My first thought was to move all my photos and videos to the Transcend Jet Drive Lite 350. Immediately I got a message - "The destination disk is not formatted correctly". In fact it isn't, and it's weird. We are reviewing a product exclusively for new Apple laptops and the card has been formatted to FAT. Reformatting a card in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) takes less than a minute. After reformatting the drive, I moved my entire Aperture library to Jet Drive Lite. I am a lawyer not a tech but I found the transfer speed to be pretty fast, at least as fast as my USB 3.0 stick and possibly as fast as a Thunderbolt device. Overall, the Transcend Jet Drive Lite meets many of my needs. The price and massive capacity should justify your attempt. We are reviewing a product exclusively for new Apple laptops and the card has been formatted to FAT. Reformatting a card in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) takes less than a minute. After reformatting the drive, I moved my entire Aperture library to Jet Drive Lite. I'm a lawyer, not an engineer, but I found the transfer speed to be quite fast, at least as fast as my USB 3.0 stick and possibly as fast as a Thunderbolt device. Overall, the Transcend Jet Drive Lite meets many of my needs. The price and massive capacity should justify your attempt. We are reviewing a product exclusively for new Apple laptops and the card has been formatted to FAT. Reformatting a card in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) takes less than a minute. After reformatting the drive, I moved my entire Aperture library to Jet Drive Lite. I'm a lawyer, not an engineer, but I found the transfer speed to be quite fast, at least as fast as my USB 3.0 stick and possibly as fast as a Thunderbolt device. Overall, the Transcend Jet Drive Lite meets many of my needs. The price and massive capacity should justify your attempt. After reformatting the drive, I moved my entire Aperture library to Jet Drive Lite. I'm a lawyer, not an engineer, but I found the transfer speed to be quite fast, at least as fast as my USB 3.0 stick and possibly as fast as a Thunderbolt device. Overall, the Transcend Jet Drive Lite meets many of my needs. The price and massive capacity should justify your attempt. After reformatting the drive, I moved my entire Aperture library to Jet Drive Lite. I'm a lawyer, not an engineer, but I found the transfer speed to be quite fast, at least as fast as my USB 3.0 stick and possibly as fast as a Thunderbolt device. Overall, the Transcend Jet Drive Lite meets many of my needs.

Pros
  • New JetDrive Toolbox update (v1.14.3)
Cons
  • Boring packaging